Negotiating Domesticity Spatial Productions of Gender in Modern Architecture

The home as part of material culture is the very place where the intricate relations between architecture, gender and domesticity become visible. This book investigates the multi-layered themes evoked by the interconnections between these terms. The contributions to this book address the gendered conceptions and the use of built spaces, the role of women as active agents of spatial production, and the mutual inscriptions of the materiality of architectural space and gendered subjectivities.
The focus of inquiry is modern architecture, also including the celebrated architecture of the Modern movement as its more common and widely spread derivatives that became the dominant mode of building in the twentieth century. The articles in the introductory section provide an overview of the existing discourse on modernity, domesticity and gender. The following three sections consist of essays on specific spatial scenarios from a broad range of geographical locations in the West, whereby the complicated relationship between gender and domestic space are revealed in architectural discourse and practice. The topics range from well-known architects and architectural examples such as Adolf Loos and the Maison de Verre to relatively unknown cases such as the polykatoikia apartments in Greece. In all cases, the authors' emphasis remains on how the concept of domesticity is produced by the gendered subjectivity of builders and users of domestic spaces and by architectural discourse.
The essays brought together in this book are based upon new interdisciplinary research which enriches architectural history with sociological, anthropological, philosophical and psychoanalytical approaches. Despitethe Modern movement's prominent emphasis on housing, the point is often made that modern art and architecture were about the suppression rather than the glorification of domesticity. This book contends that the modern era marks the rise of a new sense of domesticity that deve

In the home the intricate relations between architecture, gender and domesticity become visible.Negotiating Domesticityinvestigates themany and complexthemes evoked by the interconnections between these terms. Topics covered include famous as well as less well-known architectural examples and architects, which are explored from sociological, anthropological, philosophical and psychoanalytical approaches. The authorsexplore the relationships between modern domestic spaces and sexed subjectivities in a broad range of geographical locations of Western modernity. This richly interdisiplinary work presents architects and postgraduate students with an in-depth exploration ofdomesticity in the modern era.

Introduction: Modernity and Domesticity. Tensions and Contradictions Hilde Heynen Figures of Woman in Contemporary Architectural Discourse Gulsum Baydar Gendered Subjects: 'A Citizen as well as a Housewife.' New Spaces of Domesticity in 1930s London Elizabeth Darling. The Housewife, the Builder and the Desire for a Polykatoikia Apartment in Post-War Athens Ioanna Theocharopoulou. Promoting Catholic Family Values and Modern Domesticity in Post-War Belgium Fredie Floré. Rehearsing Domesticity: Post-War Pocono Honeymoon Resorts Barbara Penner Sexual Articulations: 'Only where Comfort Ends does Humanity Begin.' On the Coldness of Avant-Garde Architecture in the Weimar Period Karina Van Herck. The Uncanny Architect: Fears of Lesbian Builders and Deviant Homes in Modern Germany Despina Stratigakos A Queer Analysis of Eileen Grey's E.1027. Katarina Bonnevier An Architecture of Twenty-Words: Intimate Details of a London Blue Plaque House Chee Li Lian Denatured Domesticity: An Account of Femininity and Physiognomy in the Interiors of Frances Glessner Lee Laur J. Miller Spatial Practices: Unequal Union: La Casa Estudio de San Angel Inn, c. 1929-1932 Ernestina Osorio Looking at/in/from the Maison de Verre Christopher Wilson The Third House: Marie-Jose Can Hee's Dealings with Domesticity André Loeckx Photography's Veil: Reading Gender and Loo's Interiors Charles Rice The Modernist Boudoir and the Erotics of Space Anne Troutman

Hilde Heynen is a professor of architectural theory at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium. She published Architecture and Modernity-A Critique (MIT Press, 1999). She is co-editor of a substantial anthology of 20th century texts on architecture, and co-edited Back From Utopia, The Challenge of the Modern Movement and Inside Density. She regularly publishes in periodicals such as The Journal of Architecture and Home Cultures.Gülsüm Baydar teaches in the Deaprtment of Interior Architecture and Environment Design at Bilkent University. She is co-editor of Post-Colonial Space(s) (Princeton Architectural Press, 1997). Her articles, which question the disciplinary boundaries of architecture, appeared in such journals as Assemblage, The Journal of Architectural Education, The Journal of Architecture and Environment and Planning D: Society and Space.